You can't taste a phone screen
Food and drink is the most sensory category there is and social is a visual, audio medium. So the creative has to stand in for taste: the crack of the can, the pour, the fizz, the crunch, the cheese pull, and above all a real person's face on the first bite or sip. Sound-on matters more here than almost anywhere else.
The second difference is where the sale happens. A $4 drink or a $7 bag of snacks is often bought in a store, days after someone saw the ad. That changes the call to action, the targeting and how you prove the campaign worked.
Food and beverage creative that works on social
Blind taste test
Real people try it against the brand they already buy. Unscripted reactions, including the lukewarm ones, read as honest and get shared.
First sip, first bite
A close-up reaction in the first second, with the sound turned up. The simplest format in the category and often the best performer.
Three ways to use it
Recipes and use cases for sauces, spreads, mixers and pantry products. Each use case is a new reason to buy and a new hook to test.
Label read
Flip the pack and read the ingredient list or the nutrition panel aloud. Strong for better-for-you brands, as long as every claim is one you can make.
Where to find us
A creator walks into the store, finds the shelf and grabs it. It tells people the product is real, local and easy to buy.
Creator cook-along
Food creators build a recipe around your product. Saves and shares extend reach, and the best ones become ads.
Selling direct vs selling at retail
Most CPG brands do both. The campaign plan is different for each, so we decide up front which one a campaign is for.
| Plan | DTC or Amazon campaign | Retail launch campaign |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Online orders and subscriptions | Store visits and shelf velocity |
| Call to action | Variety pack, bundle, subscribe and save | Find it at your local store, coupon or rebate |
| Targeting | Broad national audience | Radius around stores that stock you |
| Landing page | Offer page with checkout | Store locator with the nearest doors |
| How we prove it worked | Orders, cost per new customer, repeat rate | Units per store per week in ad markets vs non-ad markets |
Food, beverage and alcohol rules we build into every brief
Food and drink has more advertising rules than most brands expect, and alcohol has the most of all.
- Alcohol on TikTok: approved advertisers only, audiences 25 and older in the US, nobody under 25 shown in the ad or landing page, and a responsible drinking message. Check the current TikTok alcohol policy before you plan.
- Alcohol on Meta: follow local law and age-target, which in the US means 21 and older.
- Industry codes from the Beer Institute and DISCUS ask that ads run only where at least 73.8% of the audience is of legal drinking age. The same codes ask that models and actors in alcohol ads be at least 25, so we cast creators 25 and older.
- "Healthy" on food now has a new FDA definition (compliance date February 2028). Claims like "high protein" or "low sugar" follow FDA definitions too.
- Functional drinks: "supports focus" or "boosts immunity" are health claims. You need real evidence for them, and disease claims are off limits.
- Giveaways and sweepstakes need official rules and a free way to enter. "Buy to win" is an illegal lottery in the US.
- Paid or gifted creators disclose the relationship in the video and the caption.
A campaign we'd run: a functional soda entering 300 stores
An example plan, not past client work. Say a better-for-you soda brand just landed regional distribution and needs the product to move off the shelf fast.
Map the doors
We pull the store list and build ad audiences in a radius around each one. Markets without stores get no retail spend.
Shoot in the markets
Local creators shoot taste tests and "found it at" videos in the actual stores, so viewers see their own neighborhood shelf.
Launch with a reason to try now
A digital coupon or rebate on the store locator page, run on Instagram, TikTok and Meta for the first six weeks.
Keep a DTC backstop
A variety pack online for people outside the footprint, so national viewers still have a way to buy.
Read velocity weekly
We compare units per store per week in ad markets against similar stores without ads. That gap is the number your buyer cares about at the next review.
Which platforms matter for food and drink
TikTok and Instagram Reels carry most food discovery: taste tests, recipes and reactions travel well on both. Our TikTok marketing agency page covers creative and Spark Ads. Meta ads do the geo-targeting around stores and the retargeting for DTC.
Pinterest is a recipe search engine; if your product is an ingredient, people are already planning meals there. See our Pinterest ads agency page. YouTube Shorts works for recipe content and for brands with a story worth more than 15 seconds.
Case study: a new product launch
We launched a new product. In 2 weeks, these are the results.
- 115kfollowers, starting from zero
- 7,000+emails collected
- 100+purchases across an app, a book and a paid community
No audience, no list and no sales on day one. Organic content earned the follow, a landing page captured the email, and three offers closed the sale. Read the case study.
What a food and beverage marketing agency should be judged on
For DTC: cost per new customer, first-order margin after shipping (heavy liquids are expensive to ship), and subscription retention at 60 and 90 days. For retail: store locator searches, coupon redemptions, and velocity lift in ad markets against matched markets without ads.
Across both, we track which flavors and use cases win in the creative, because that data is useful well beyond social: it tells you what to push to your retail buyer and which flavor to make next. Our UGC content model keeps enough fresh taste tests coming to keep learning.